


your father's eyes from your eyes cry to me

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (yes he's dead in this fic no he's still a gift), Bittersweet, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, House Stark, I Blame Tumblr, Post-Series, Robb Stark is a Gift, Spoilers for Book 4 - A Feast for Crows, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7805944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Jeyne Westerling arrives in Winterfell with Robb's heir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your father's eyes from your eyes cry to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yolande](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yolande/gifts).



> Uhm, so _someone_ mentioned above comes into my askbox with _Imagine, if you dare to imagine, Jeyne Westerling resurfacing with a Tully-looking baby (maybe a little girl? Idk, I always imagined living Robb with bunch of daughters) and subsequent Starklings' meltdown, bc it's Robb's child, OMG, we're going to tell her all the stories and spoil her rotten. But also bc of "Robb isn't here to see her growing up" feels._ I'm apparently unable to resist such catnip. So here's five reaction from the Starks + bonus Theon. I don't even know, I was aiming for cathartic here. Also I still don't think I'm the best person around at writing children *I* came up with but I tried.
> 
> Usual disclaimers: nothing belongs to me, the title is from my second-favorite Queen song in existence that has now become 1000% more sad than it was before.

 

1\. _jon_

 

“Your Grace,” the guard says, “there’s a girl at the gates who wants to see you. She didn’t want to say her name and she doesn’t look - well, as if _you_  might know her. But she insists for an audience.”

Jon wonders why it seems like people around him have assumed that he would turn away a request for help, never mind that he still can’t fathom people calling him _your grace_. Good thing that if they live through the war it’s going to be his brother’s plight and not his. “Well, I am not busy, am I? Let her in.”

The guard doesn’t seem that convinced, but leaves and comes back not long later. For a moment he had dared hoping that it was finally Arya, from what information he’s put together he knows there’s a likely chance that she’s still alive and at least _she_  hadn’t married Ramsay Bolton.

(Even if whenever he glances at Jeyne Poole he feels bad for ever thinking such a thing.)

It’s not Arya. She’s thin, and she’s wearing clothes that once might have been finely made but now are torn and dirty. Her hair is hastily tied and she’s holding a bundle to her chest, and when she looks up at him she looks about to cry.

Jon thinks that she’s quite pretty, though not exceptionally so. She has chestnut hair and eyes and a pale face and her mouth is stretched in a thin line. The babe she’s obviously holding against her chest lets out a small cry and she shushes it before her back straightens up and she moves closer.

“Your Grace,” she says. She sounds this close to breaking down in sobs.

“How can I help you?” He asks, moving closer. “I - it seems like you’re in need of shelter, and we wouldn’t turn anyone out -”

“I am. In need of shelter, but - gods, _he_  always said you were as honorable as your father -”

Jon almost flinches at that, because all right, _if only_ , given what he’s learned lately, but then -

“ _He_?”

“Your brother,” she says, and she takes a deep breath. “I didn’t tell the guard who I was because - if people knew -” She stops, breathes in again, and then she loosens the hold on her babe, enough that Jon can actually see its face.

Jon would like to ask what’s going on or how she knows anyone he’s related to or why she’s just not telling him her name -

And then he understand.

It’s a baby girl. She has to be at least six or seven moons old, she has a few teeth already, and if it was just for the pristinely brushed and kept auburn hair falling over her shoulders, maybe he could have doubted.

Maybe.

But the moment he sees her, a pair of eyes who are _exactly the same as Robb’s_  look up at him and he knows.

“… Lady Jeyne?” He asks, his voice thinning.

“Your Grace,” she sobs. “I ran from Riverrun when I understood I was with child, or they’d have - my mother was in agreement with Tywin Lannister that I’d marry one of _them_  when it was proved I wasn’t expecting. Some people in the village who were still loyal to the Tullys took me in, but I couldn’t ask them to provide for _both_  of us, and the Riverlands aren’t safe now. I stayed until she was born and then - I heard that King Stannis helped you and your family retake Winterfell, and I thought - I thought -”

“I understand,” he says at once. He puts a hand on her arm, as slow as possible - she’s crying when she looks up at him. “And I’d never turn away my brother’s wife. Or _his daughter_.”

“Your Grace -”

“I think Jon will suffice,” he says, and then she breaks down crying in utter relief. He feels kind of awkward as he tries to put an arm around her and ends up helping her holding up the baby, but somehow it works out.

“Does she have a name?” Jon asks when Jeyne’s not openly crying anymore.

She sniffs. “I didn’t want to presume, but - well, I couldn’t ask _him_ , and I thought - maybe he’d have named her after his mother, so -”

“Catelyn Stark?” Jon asks, and isn’t _that_  ironic. Then again, he can’t certainly fault the poor girl for that, and _his_  feelings towards Robb’s mother shouldn’t really count.

“Yes.”

“Well, she definitely looks like it,” he has to admit, and he thinks, _if only Robb could have seen her_.

He doesn’t say it, though.

 

2\. _rickon_

 

“Robb had a _daughter_?”

Jon chuckles and tells him that yes, he did, and she and Robb’s wife just arrived, and if he wants to see them they’ll be dining with the two of them tonight.

(Sansa isn’t coming back from the Vale until tomorrow or so she said - Rickon really hopes she’ll stop coming and going. It’s stupid. She shouldn’t be _there_. What is the Vale to them?)

Fact is: he never talks about it because he’s seen Jon and Sansa’s faces fall whenever he does, but as it is, he doesn’t remember  _much_  of before - before the war. He remembers Robb, but their mother and father are - just not pictures he can easily bring to mind. He hasn’t seen them in years and he knows that he’s supposed to, but he can’t.

He still doesn’t _say_  it and lets everyone think he does. Better for everyone. When Robb’s wife - Jon said her name was Jeyne, like Jeyne Poole - shows up for dinner, Rickon thinks that she _does_  look a bit like Jeyne Poole, just prettier - same as Jeyne Poole, though, she seems more or less haunted as well. Which is a bad look on people, he assumes.

But then he looks at the baby in her arms, and it’s not just that his own eyes and hair are looking back at him, but _something_  in her face makes him think of another woman with that same hair and eyes who used to smile at him years ago. And then - well. There’s something else he can’t possibly name that just screams _Robb_  and it’s not just the looks. Maybe it’s the smile. He doesn’t know.

But his first reaction is smiling back at her.

 

3\. _sansa_

 

 _“_ I have something for you,” Sansa says, coming into Cat’s room, her hands hidden behind her back.

“Really?” Her niece sounds delighted at the prospect. Gods if she isn’t the sweetest child Sansa’s ever met, which absolutely makes sense given that she’s _Robb’_ s and that her mother is also a perfectly lovely girl, and Sansa could see why Robb did come to love her that much after getting to know her when she showed up on the eve of the Long Night.

“Really,” Sansa smiles. “I told your parents I would wait for your nameday, but it’s two moons away and I couldn’t resist.”

“If they said so maybe we should wait?” Cat sounds as if she’s asking out of knowing it would be bad to go behind your parents’s back, which is just - such another _Robb_  thing, Sansa doesn’t know what to make of it but gods if it’s not endearing.

“Well, maybe, but who’s going to tell them? You’ll just get something else and they'll be none the wiser.” She winks and then moves her hands from behind her back, producing a new winter blue dress she’s sewn during the last few weeks - she saw new shipments of fine Dornish silk in the market and she couldn’t resist buying some.

“Oh,” Cat says, "it’s _beautiful_.”

“You can wear it on your nameday, how about it?”

“Can I try it?”

“Of course, it’s yours.”

Cat grins at the prospect and Sansa helps her put it on. Then maybe she figures she could try and see if they can find out a nice way to style her hair.

Thing is, Sansa isn’t planning on finding a suitor anytime soon. Jon has assured Sansa that he’ll never ask it of her, and all things considered, she doesn’t really feel the need to go out of her way to marry. Not when the North is separate again and out of all of their bannermen not one of them would presume to ask for alliances through _her_ hand - they know what she went through to come back and that she wants to stay in Winterfell.

And maybe she won’t have children of her own, but she things it’s quite all right - she doesn’t need any, not when she might as well have one already.

 

4\. _arya_

 

“Shouldn’t you wear something else?”

Her niece looks at her in a very, very _not_  impressed way. Arya’s been told that _that_  was the way she used to look at people back when she was her age. She supposes she can’t complain.

“Why?”

“It’s not - do you want to learn how to use a sword?”

“Of course, I asked!”

“A dress isn’t - comfortable,” Arya shrugs.

“I like it. And I think it is.” Cat says it as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

Arya remembers hating trying to use a bow or a sword with  _dresses_  on, but maybe her niece doesn’t mind, and - well, she’s moved that she asked, and good thing that neither Jon nor her mother opposed it, all the contrary.

(She still can’t believe, sometimes, that while waiting for Rickon to come of age Jon had decided that he’d close the question about who should be the Queen regent and, instead of finding an alliance, or listening to various advisors who told him that he should have gotten over his issues tied to his familial relations to Queen Daenerys and married her, he married his brother’s widow. They definitely aren’t _in love_  in the way people in Sansa’s songs used to be, Arya muses, but they do like each other and it’s convenient and they both love their - _Robb’s_  - daughter to pieces, so she figures it wasn’t a bad outcome.)

“Fine. If it gets ruined it’s your business, not mine. I can’t sew worth a damn.”

“That’s fine, _I_  can.”

Of course, Arya figures, no one who’s spent most of her life around Sansa wouldn’t know.

“Well then, take this,” she says. She hasn’t needed to use Needle in years, she thinks as she hands it to Cat, and maybe one day she’ll tell her that it’s not _any_  sword _,_ but for now it will do.

 

5\. _bran_

 

Sometimes, Bran thinks, he wishes _all_  of his family could do what he can.

He doesn’t touch weirwoods often these days, and he’s learned what it means to try and see the past freely. He never tried it with the future, but he hadn’t really dared, not after realizing fully what he could do _wrong_  if he lost control. He knows that _all_  of his siblings can warg at least inside their wolves, he’s talked about it to all of them and he knows for sure that Arya maybe could try aiming higher, but -

But maybe it’s unfair, because he wouldn’t wish his burden on anyone. And good thing that he doesn’t have to be beyond the Wall anymore to fulfill that kind of duty, because he’d rather be in Winterfell if he has to.

Still, if Cat could -

Sometimes he wishes she could because she knows about Robb, and they’ve told her about him in every possible way, and she could probably write a book about her father, but it still doesn’t come close to the real thing. Not at all. She should have _known_  him, and Robb should have known her, too, because gods if she doesn’t remind Bran of his brother more with every passing moment, and if she could he could bring her with him and just _show_  her, but -

But it’s not the kind of thing you should misuse that freely, Bran thinks, and so he never even considers trying. Instead he marvels at how his niece is growing up looking less like his lady mother and more like - like _Robb_  might have looked if he had been born female, and figures that it’s not such a bad outcome after all.

 

\+ 1 _theon_

 

“Did you name him after my - my father? Well. I mean -”

“Not Jon, I know,” Theon says as Cat sits down next to him under the heart tree. “But yes, I did name him after your father. It wasn’t really a choice.”

For that matter, he still doesn’t know _how_  it happened and how Jeyne actually burst out in tears of joy when she told him she was with child, given that he first kissed her _years_  after the end of the Long Night. Then again, Robb’s _daughter_  is two and ten by now, and  _his_  son was born three days ago. Never mind that he never thought that _he_  would ever father any children, but -

But when Jeyne told him and seemed _ecstatic_  about it, he just couldn’t not let himself think that maybe, just maybe, it couldn’t be such a bad thing.

“It wasn’t?”

Gods, she looks _so much_  like Robb, at times Theon feels pained whenever he looks at her. The eyes, the hair, the _face_ , but more than that, she’s just - so much like her father, he can barely believe it.

(Hells, for one, when he told her _why_  he was missing a few fingers and why some people still look at him wrongly even if he’s never left Winterfell since the end of the Long Night and how much he still wishes he had died with Robb most of the time, instead of never talking to him again she stood up and _hugged_  him, gods. Her father’s daughter, _indeed_.)

“No. Because he was the best person I ever knew, and I couldn’t have done otherwise. It’s the least he deserves, really.”

She nods. “Hm. From what I hear - sometimes it seems like he was too good to be true. My father, I mean.”

Theon laughs - he can’t help it. These days he doesn’t even care about his fake teeth showing when he does it. “Well,” he answers thoughtfully, “he wasn’t - I mean. He had his faults. Sometimes he’d feel too swamped by obligations and he’d take it out on people who had nothing to do with it, and he trusted people too easily, and he had his moments where he could tell you thinks that he wouldn’t realize might hurt you, but he never _meant_  it, and - he still was the best person you could ever know. It’s not that he was without faults, but overall? He was a lot more than that. He made your life better if he was around, really, and I’d be happy about that if I were you.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you’re exactly like him, that’s why.”

Her cheeks flush just slightly, not as bright red as the hair tied in her braid.

He had wished, once upon a time, that he could stop being the Starks’s hostage and he and Robb could be equals for good. He had wished a lot more often than he _was_  Ned’s ward and that he and Robb could have grown up being equals in the first place.

It wasn’t for them, he figures, but it can’t be too bad to hope that it might be for their children, can it?

 

End.


End file.
